By Johnathan Paoli
The South African Police Service’s (SAPS) ballistics division is buckling under a backlog of more than 41 000 cases, crippling staff shortages, and operational bottlenecks that threaten the integrity of firearm-related investigations.
Brigadier Mishak Mkhabela, head of the ballistics section at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Silverton, told the Madlanga Commission on Monday that as a result, the unit’s capacity to link guns to crimes was “severely compromised”.
Mkhabela, who joined the police in 1994 and trained as a ballistics analyst for three years, painted a vivid picture of the pressures facing forensic analysts in a country where gun-related crimes continue to surge.
“If anyone wants to appreciate the level of high crime involving firearms in South Africa, one must just visit my strong room, where I keep exhibits. At any given point, I have more than 29 000 firearms, and [with] each of those firearms, a
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